June 27th, 2007

Surely leaky pipes aren't more important than our children. Yet, in America, most plumbers make five times what caregivers do. Author Riane Eisler shows how our economic system, rooted in gender inequality, is failing us. An excerpt from her latest book follows.

A majority of Americans believe that gays and lesbians could not change their sexual orientation even if they wanted to, according to results of a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Wednesday.

It's the first time in a CNN poll the majority has held that belief regarding homosexuality.

Fifty-six percent of about 515 poll respondents said they do not believe sexual orientation can be changed. In 2001, 45 percent of those responding to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll held that belief. In 1998, according to a CNN/Time poll, the number was 36 percent.

In addition, 42 percent of respondents to the current poll said they believe homosexuality results from upbringing and environment, while 39 percent said they believe it is something a person is born with -- a close division that reflects the national debate over the issue.

However, those numbers are greatly changed from the 1970s and '80s, in which fewer than 20 percent of Americans said a person is born homosexual. In a 1977 poll, the number was 13 percent.

Ten percent in the latest poll said they believe both factors play a role in someone's homosexuality. Three percent said neither, and 6 percent had no opinion.

The sampling error for the results released Wednesday, in which the question was asked of a half-sample of 1,029 telephone poll respondents, is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. The poll was conducted Friday through Sunday.

In a poll conducted May 4-6 that dealt with other issues regarding homosexuality, participants were asked whether openly gay people should be allowed to serve in the U.S. military, which currently has a "don't ask-don't tell" policy on homosexuality. Seventy-nine percent of poll respondents said openly gay people should be allowed to serve in the military. Eighteen percent said they should not.

On the question of gay marriage, 43 percent of respondents in May said they would not support same-sex marriage or civil unions, which provide many, if not most, of the same legal protections as marriage. Twenty-four percent said they supported same-sex marriage, while 27 percent opted for civil unions.

But a majority of poll respondents -- 57 percent -- said gay and lesbian couples should have the legal right to adopt children. Forty percent said they should not.

The sampling error for those questions was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

WaPo Blog is doing a series on Dick Cheney that is illuminating to say the most and scary to say the least - in particular the blog Leaving No Tracks, and specifically the bit where former Bush EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman says she quit after Cheney rewrote coal power plant rules. From Rawstory:

Christine Todd Whitman is the media darling of talk shows, the conservative former governor of New Jersey and head of President George W. Bush's Environmental Protection Agency who quit the Bush Administration to "spend more time with her family."

Evidently, that's not true.

In a groundbreaking article today by the Washington Post, the paper alleges that Whitman left the Administration because they pressured her to accept pro-industry coal power plant rules which threatened ghoulish levels of air pollution.

After industry officials complained to Vice President Cheney about Clinton-era rules requiring plants to update their technology when they conducted routine maintenance to comply with air quality standards, Cheney turned to Whitman, she said.

Whitman told the Post she'd "been stunned by what she viewed as an unquestioned belief that EPA's regulations were primarily to blame for keeping companies from building new power plants."

"I was upset, mad, offended that there seemed to be so much head-nodding around the table," she said. She said she had to fight "tooth and nail"to keep Cheney from turning over the rewriting of the rules to the Energy Department.

Whitman says she wanted a return to Bush's "Clear Skies" initiative, but that went nowhere.

Whitman brought two folders to show President Bush. The first was 2 1/2 inches thick, detailing the dangers of raising legal levels of arsenic in drinking water -- another Administration proposal. She pointed to a folder she'd brought "four or five times as thick."

"If you think arsenic was bad," she recalled telling Bush, "look at what has already been written about this."

Nothing changed. After the EPA rewrote the coal power plant standards, the White House essentially rewrote the rules to favor industry. Whitman said she'd had enough.

"I just couldn't sign it," she told the Post. "The president has a right to have an administrator who could defend it, and I just couldn't."

Soon thereafter, a federal appeals court found that the rule change violated the Clean Air Act -- according to the paper, the judges said the administration had redefined the law in a way that could be valid "only in a Humpty-Dumpty world."

Why the FUCK is this only just now coming out? This is the kind of shit that infuriates me, finding out these sorts of things long after the fact. Protect the administration at the expense of everything and everyone else. I know, I know, that's the way this game is played and this is completely typical behavior on their part - but still....

Apparently I've had a number of comments to previous posts dumped into my email inbox, like a ton of them. Some dated back a month, some even longer than that I think. If there was anything you wanted me to reply to, link me to it and I will because I deleted them all.

Also, I know all about Ann Coulter and the vile things she said about John Edwards and the shitty stuff she said to Elizabeth Edwards when Mrs. Edwards called her out on all of it, but I have made the choice to no longer blog about Ann Coulter. She's a vicious cunt and a life support system for evil, and I'm personally not going to promote her or indulge her need for attention in my blog. Same for that cunt Michelle Malkin, she and Coulter can scissor each other until one's saw toothed snatch devours the other for all I care.